Airbnb, Eric Holder and Discrimination
by Miki SaxonTech says they’re trying.
Experts love to call it “bias,” “diversity crisis” or some similar polite euphemism.
A simpler, more recognizable and much less politically correct term is bigotry — conscious or not.
Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky calls it discrimination, pure and simple, and wants to eradicate it from his platform.
“When we designed the platform, three white guys, there were a lot of things we didn’t think about,” Chesky said to an audience at the conference. “There are racists in the world and we need to have zero tolerance.”
There’s no question that people of color, especially African Americans, have more trouble booking on Airbnb.
There’s also no question that people of color are exercising greater and greater buying power.
As of 2014 Hispanic’s spent $1.3 trillion, people of African decent $1.1 trillion, Asians $770 billion and Native Americans $100 billion.
That’s a whole lot of buying power.
There’s also no question that Airbnb has been slow to recognize/admit to the problem — as has the rest of tech.
In a serious effort to change, Chesky has hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to “craft a world-class anti-discrimination policy.”
“This process isn’t close to being over, but we want to be as transparent as possible along the way because I know we’ve failed on that front previously. I want us to be smart and innovative and to create new tools to prevent discrimination and bias that can be shared across the industry.”
Which makes it likely Chesky is serious, since guys like Holder don’t come cheap — nor are they easy to shut up or buy off if the company isn’t serious.
Hopefully it will help.
But it will more likely be a cold day in hell before anyone or anything changes racist MAP.
Image credit: Wikipedia